The development of legal psychology in our days. The history of the emergence and development of legal psychology

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NON-STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

"MOSCOW INSTITUTE OF LAW"

Legal faculty

Speciality-" jurisprudence»

Academic discipline legal psychology

Course work

The main directions of development of legal psychology

Student:

Denisova Svetlana Vladimirovna

G. BARNAUL 2010

Introduction

Early history of legal psychology

Formation of legal psychology as a science

History of legal psychology in the twentieth century

Fundamentals of Legal Psychology

Methodological foundations of legal psychology

Tasks of legal psychology

Subject and system of legal psychology

Prospects for the development of legal psychology

List of used literature

legal psychology science

Introduction

Legal psychology is one of the relatively young branches psychological science. The first attempts to systematically solve certain problems of jurisprudence by the methods of psychology date back to the 18th century.

In the development of legal psychology, the following three stages can be distinguished:

1. Early history of legal psychology - XVIII century. and the first half of the 19th century.

2. The initial design of legal psychology as a science - the end of the XIX century. and the beginning of the 20th century.

3. History of legal psychology in the XX century.

Legal psychology includes various areas scientific knowledge, the psychological activity of people acquires peculiar features, which are due to the specifics of human activity in the field of legal regulation.

Law is always associated with the normative behavior of people. Being an active member of society, a person performs actions, actions that are subject to certain rules. The rules that are obligatory for a particular community of people are called norms of behavior and are established by the people themselves in the interests of either the whole society or individual groups and classes.

1. EARLY HISTORY OF LEGAL PSYCHOLOGY

Like most of the new sciences that arose at the junction of various branches of human knowledge, legal psychology in the early stages of its development did not have independence and did not have a special staff of scientists. Individual psychologists, lawyers, and even specialists in other fields of knowledge have tried to solve issues related to this discipline. The initial stage of development is associated with the need to turn the legal sciences to psychology in order to solve specific problems that could not be solved. traditional methods jurisprudence. Legal psychology, like many other branches of psychological science, has gone from purely speculative constructions to scientific and experimental research.

One of the first authors who considered a number of forensic psychological aspects and the idea of ​​humanism was M.M. Shcherbatov (1733-1790). In his writings, he demanded that laws be drafted with individual features personality of a person, one of the first raised the issue of parole from punishment. He positively assessed the labor factor in the re-education of a criminal.

Of interest are the works of I.T. Pososhkov (1652-1726), which gave psychological recommendations regarding the interrogation of the accused and witnesses, the classification of criminals, and touched upon some other issues.

The spread of the idea of ​​correction and re-education of the criminal forced the right to turn to psychology for the scientific substantiation of these problems. Over their decision at the beginning of the XIX century. V.K. worked in Russia. Elpatievskiy, P.D. Lodiy, L.S. Gordienko, Chr. Stelzer and others.

However, psychology itself, which at that time was of a metaphysical, speculative nature, could not, even in alliance with criminal law, develop sufficiently substantiated criteria and methods for studying the human personality.

A significant number of works on legal psychology appeared in Russia in the third quarter of the 19th century. These are the works of I.S. Barshev "A look at the science of criminal law", K.Ya. Yanovich-Yanevsky “Thoughts about criminal justice from the point of view of psychology and physiology”, A.U. Frese "Essay on Forensic Psychology", L.E. Vladimirov "Mental characteristics of criminals according to the latest research" and some others.

In these works, the ideas of a purely pragmatic use of psychological knowledge in the specific activities of judicial and investigative bodies were expressed. So, I.S. Barshev, for example, wrote that if the judge does not know psychology, then it will be "a trial not of living beings, but of corpses."

In the works of German scientists I. Hofbauer "Psychology in its main applications in judicial life" (1808) and I. Friedrich "Systematic Guide to Forensic Psychology" (1835), an attempt was made to use the data of psychology in the investigation of crimes.

The psychological issues of evaluating testimonies also occupied the outstanding French mathematician Laplace. In "Experiences in the Philosophy of the Theory of Probability", published in France in 1814 (Russian translation - M., 1908), Laplace considers the probability of testimony along with the probability of outcomes of court verdicts, resolutions at meetings, etc., trying to evaluate them in mathematical terms. He believed that the elements of the probability that a given testimony is true are:

* from the probabilities of the event itself, about which the witness narrates;

* from the probability of four hypotheses regarding the interrogated person:

a) the witness does not make mistakes and does not lie;

b) the witness lies, but is mistaken;

c) the witness is not mistaken, but lies;

d) the witness both lies and makes mistakes.

Laplace understood the difficulty of evaluating in this way the truthfulness or falsity of a witness's testimony due to the large number of circumstances accompanying the facts they testify to, but he believed that the court in its judgments also relies not on mathematical certainty, but only on probability. Nevertheless, Laplace's scheme is interesting as the first attempt to create a scientific method for evaluating evidence.

For a long time, the study of the problems of forensic psychology did not go beyond these first attempts. In the second half of the 19th century, not only the successful development of the natural sciences, but also the growth of crime in all the leading capitalist countries served as an impetus for the further revival and expansion of forensic psychological research.

2. DESIGN OF LEGAL PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

Late 19th and early 20th centuries associated with the intensive development of psychology, psychiatry and a number of legal disciplines (primarily criminal law). A number of scientists representing these sciences at that time occupied progressive positions (I.M. Sechenov, V.M. Bekhterev, S.S. Korsakov, V.P. Serbsky, A.F. Koni and others).

The development of psychology, psychiatry and law led to the need to formalize legal psychology as an independent scientific discipline. P.I. Kovalevsky in 1899 raised the question of the separation of psychopathology and legal psychology, as well as the introduction of these sciences into the course of legal education.

Around the same period, a struggle broke out between the anthropological and sociological schools of criminal law. The founder of the anthropological school was C. Lombroso, who created the theory of the “innate criminal”, which, due to its atavistic features, cannot be corrected.

Representatives of the sociological school used the ideas of utopian socialism and attached decisive importance in explaining the causes of crime to social facts. For this time, some of the ideas of the sociological school carried progressive elements.

At the beginning of the XX century. experimental methods of research appear in legal psychology.

A significant number of works of this period are devoted to the psychology of testimonies. These are the works of I.N. Kholchev "Dreamy lie", Gr. Portugalov "On Testimony" (1903), E.M. Kulischer, The Psychology of Testimony and Judicial Investigation (1904). On the same topic, reports were made by M.M. Khomyakov "On the question of the psychology of the witness" (1903), A.V. Zavadsky and A.I. Elistratov “On the influence of questions without suggestion on the reliability of witness testimony” (1904), O.B. Goldovsky "Psychology of testimonies" (1904).

The works of L.E. Vladimirova, G.S. Feldstein, M.N. Gernet and others, which explore the psychology of the criminal's personality.

The most thorough work on forensic psychology belonged to Hans Gross. In his "Criminal Psychology", published in 1898, the results of general pathological experimental studies of a number of psychologists of that time were used.

In the study of the psychology of crime investigation, a major step forward was the direct application of the experimental method of psychology. One of the founders of this method, the French psychologist Alfred Binet, was the first to experimentally study the question of the influence of suggestion on children's readings. In 1900, he published a book entitled Suggestibility, in which a special chapter is devoted to the influence of suggestion on children's testimony. In it, A. Binet draws interesting conclusions: 1) answers to questions always contain errors; 2) in order to correctly assess the testimony in the minutes of court sessions, both questions and answers to them should be stated in detail.

In 1902, experiments to determine the reliability of testimonies were carried out by the German psychologist William Stern. His task was not to find scientifically based methods of obtaining the testimony of witnesses, as in A. Binet, but to establish the degree of reliability of the testimony. Based on his data, V. Stern argued that the testimony is fundamentally unreliable, vicious, since "forgetting is the rule, and remembering is the exception." V. Stern reported the results of his research at a meeting of the Berlin Psychological Society; they aroused great interest in the legal circles of many European countries. Subsequently, V. Stern created a personalistic concept of memory, which had a pronounced idealistic character. According to this concept, a person's memory is not a reflection of objective reality, but only acts as its distortion in favor of the narrowly selfish interests of the individual, his individualistic intentions, his pride, vanity, ambition, etc.

V. Stern's report caused a stormy reaction among Russian lawyers as well. Zealous supporters of V. Stern in Russia were Professor of St. Petersburg University O.B. Goldovsky, professor of Kazan University A.V. Zavadsky and A.I. Elistratov. They independently conducted a series of experiments similar to those of V. Stern and drew similar conclusions. O. Goldovsky himself said: “The psychological reasons for errors are very different, and the conclusion from comparing the picture reproduced by the witness with reality is very sad. The witness does not give an exact copy, but only a surrogate for it.

Views of A.V. Zavadsky and A.I. Elistratov are most accurately formulated in the following statement: “V. Stern made a series of experiments on the reliability of witness testimony. Experiments gave him the right to make such a position: unmistakable readings will be the exception, while readings with errors should be considered the rule. This position can be considered quite established.

O. Lipman, A. Kramer, V.F. Liszt, S. Yaffa and others. Since 1903, V. Stern, with the cooperation of Liszt and Gross, began to publish the journal Reports on the Psychology of Testimony.

Research on forensic psychology was also carried out in other countries: in France - by Claparede, in the USA - by Meyers, and also by Meakin Kettel, who in 1895 conducted an experiment with the memory of students, and then proposed to compile an index of degrees of accuracy of witness testimony.

M.M. also worked on the psychology of testimonies in Russia. Khomyakov, M.P. Bukhvalova, A.N. Bershtein, E.M. Kulischer and others. In 1905, the collection “Problems of Psychology. Lies and testimonies. Many of the articles in the collection were permeated with the idea of ​​the unreliability of testimonies.

Characteristic is the review of the experiments of V. Stern by the then Chief Prosecutor of the Criminal Cassation Senate of Russia (later the Minister of Justice) I.G. Shcheglovitova. He wrote: "The latest observations show that the testimonies contain many involuntary distortions of the truth, and therefore it is necessary to avoid establishing the external situation of the crime solely with the help of witnesses."

However, it should be noted that not all legal scholars and psychologists of that period shared a negative attitude towards testimonies. Among them, first of all, one should name the largest Russian lawyer A.F. Horses. In the debate on the report of O. Goldovsky "On the Psychology of Witness Testimony" at a meeting of the criminal department of the law society of St. Petersburg University, A. F. Koni sharply opposed the conclusions of V. Stern and O. Goldovsky. He said: "One cannot hide the fact that Stern's research is extremely one-sided, one cannot also hide the fact that in essence it is as much a campaign against witnesses as it is against judges and especially jurors." Later, at a meeting of the same society, A.F. Koni delivered a standalone report on the same issue, which was essentially a response to unsubstantiated allegations of the unreliability of witness testimony.

Scientists of Kazan University M.A. Lazarev and V.I. Valitsky stated that Stern's provisions would not matter for practice, that the most important evil in witness testimony is not involuntary errors, but the conscious lie of witnesses, a phenomenon more common than is commonly believed: almost 3/4 of witnesses deviate from the truth.

The famous Soviet psychologist B.M. Teplov correctly noted that even with the complete subjective conscientiousness of the authors, the results of psychological experiments in terms of content will be determined by the theory that guides them. In their psychological research, V. Stern and others showed a lack of understanding of the peculiarities of the mental reflection of objective reality. Yes, essence involuntary memory they considered it as an accidental result of passive imprinting by the brain of the factors acting on it. “Our review of various theories of memory in foreign psychology showed that the main and common defect for them is that memory was not studied as a product of activity, and above all the practical activity of the subject, and also as a special, independent ideal activity. This was one of the main reasons that gave rise to both mechanistic and idealistic ideas about memory” 4 .

The development of sciences, including the sciences of social phenomena, gives rise to the desire to understand the causes of crime, to give a scientific justification for the activities of social institutions involved in its prevention. Thus, already in the 19th century, a new approach to solving this problem begins to take shape, the essence of which is the desire to uncover the causes of criminal behavior and, on their basis, draw up a program of practical activities to combat crime and crime.

In the middle of the 19th century, Cesare Lombroso was one of the first to attempt to scientifically explain the nature of criminal behavior from the standpoint of anthropology. Lombroso's theory finds followers in our time. Echoes of it can be found in modern theories, such as Klinefelter's theory of chromosomal abnormalities, in Freudian and neo-Freudian teachings about innate aggression and destructive drives, and genetic engineering.

Obviously, if one follows the logic of the anthropological theory of C. Lombroso to the end, then the fight against crime should be carried out by physical destruction or lifelong isolation of "innate" criminals. The biologizing approach in explaining the nature of criminal behavior was already subjected to serious, fair criticism by bourgeois sociologists, Lombroso's contemporaries, when crime began to be studied as a social phenomenon.

3. HISTORY OF LEGAL SCIENCE IN THE XX CENTURY

The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th centuries is characterized by the sociologization of criminological knowledge, when the causes of crime as a social phenomenon began to be studied by bourgeois sociologists J. Quetelet, E. Durkheim, P. Dupoty, M. Weber, L. Levy-Bruhl and others, who, using the method social statistics, overcame the anthropological approach in explaining the nature of criminal behavior, showing the dependence of deviant behavior on the social conditions of society. These works were certainly a progressive phenomenon of their time.

A solid statistical analysis of various abnormal manifestations (crime, suicide, prostitution), carried out, in particular, by Jean Quetelet, Emile Durkheim for a certain historical period of time, showed that the number of anomalies in people's behavior every time inevitably increased during wars, economic crises, social upheavals, which convincingly refuted the theory of the "innate" criminal, pointing to the social roots of this phenomenon.

These facts are reflected, in particular, in a number of socio-psychological theories of crime by American social psychologists of this period - R. Merton, J. Starland, D. Mats, T. Sykes, E. Gluck and others. The works of these authors present diverse approaches to explaining the nature of delinquent behavior through various socio-psychological mechanisms and phenomena that regulate the interaction and behavior of people in a group. A characteristic feature of various bourgeois socio-psychological theories of crime is the absence of a single methodological platform, ignoring the socio-economic determinism of crime and other negative social phenomena.

Distinctive feature modern criminological knowledge is a systematic approach to the consideration and study of the causes and factors of deviant behavior, the development of the problem at the same time by representatives of various branches of science: lawyers, sociologists, psychologists, physicians.

This, in turn, allows for a comprehensive approach to the practice of crime prevention. A significant role is played by the psychological and pedagogical equipment of those social institutions that in practice carry out law enforcement, preventive, penitentiary activities.

Modern biological criminological theories are far from being as naive as Lombroso in explaining the nature of criminal behavior. They base their arguments on achievements modern sciences: genetics, psychology, psychoanalysis. So, in particular, one of the sensations of the 70s was the discovery of the so-called Klinefelter syndrome: chromosomal abnormalities of type 74XVV in normal set chromosomes in men 46XY among criminals are 36 times more common.

A hypothesis was also tested, according to which chromosomal abnormalities are more common not in general in all criminals, but primarily among tall people. The American National Center for Mental Health published a report in 1970 that included a review of 45 studies of the alleged link between chromosomal abnormalities and crime. A total of 5342 criminals were investigated, while a group of tall people was specially selected, which is allegedly most often associated with aggressive behavior in chromosomal disorders. Among these individuals, only 2% were found to have chromosomal abnormalities, among criminals of any height - 0.7%, among the control group of law-abiding citizens, which amounted to 327 people - 0.1%."

In essence, this study established some minimal connection of chromosomal abnormalities not so much with crime as with mental illness.

At the International Conference in France in 1972, researchers from different countries expressed the unanimous opinion that the relationship between gene disorders and crime is not statistically confirmed.

Thus, the theory of chromosomal anomalies, as once the anthropological theory of crime, did not find its confirmation on closer examination and was subjected to serious justified criticism.

The followers of the biologizing approach, and in particular the representatives of the Freudian and neo-Freudian schools, pay special attention to explaining the nature of such a property as aggressiveness, which allegedly serves as the root cause of violent crimes. Aggression - behavior, the purpose of which is to harm some object or person. It arises, according to Freudians and neo-Freudians, as a result of the fact that, for various reasons, individual unconscious innate drives do not receive realization, which causes aggressive energy, the energy of destruction, to come to life. As such unconscious innate drives, E. Freud considered libido, A. Adler - the desire for power, for superiority over others, E. Fromm - the desire for destruction.

Obviously, with such an explanation, aggressiveness must inevitably arise in any person with innate, strongly expressed unconscious drives, which are far from always able to be realized in life and therefore find their way out in destructive, destructive behavior.

However, subsequent researchers of aggressiveness and its nature both abroad and in our country (A. Bandura, D. Bergkovets, A. Base, E. Kvyatkovskaya-Tokhovich, S.N. Enikolopov and others) significantly changed the point view of the nature of aggression and its expression.

An increasing role in the nature of aggression is assigned to social factors that act in vivo. So, A. Bandura believes that aggression is the result of a distorted process of socialization, in particular, the result of parents' abuse of punishment, cruelty to children. A. Bergovets points out that between the objective situation and the aggressive behavior of a person, there are always two mediating reasons: readiness for aggression (anger) and interpretation, interpretation for oneself of this situation.

Individual psychosomatic and gender and age characteristics, associated deviations (mental retardation, neuropsychic and somatic pathologies, age-related crisis periods of development, etc.) are considered as psychobiological prerequisites for antisocial behavior that can impede the social adaptation of an individual, by no means being while being a fatal predetermining cause of criminal behavior.

Currently, in Western criminology, the largest share is occupied by socio-psychological theories of crime, which explain the socio-psychological mechanisms of the assimilation of the so-called delinquent morality by mechanisms for neutralizing moral control, defense mechanisms. In this direction, in the social psychology of the United States, there are a number of rather original attempts to explain the ways in which a delinquent subculture is formed among minors.

These include the theory of "social anomaly" by R. Merton, which is built on the hypothesis of withering away, the falling away of moral norms in delinquent behavior (sociology of crime); the theory of "neutralization" of D. Mats, T. Sykes, who believe that the offender as a whole shares the generally accepted norms of morality, but justifies his criminal behavior.

The development of legal psychology in the early years of Soviet power was greatly facilitated by the great public interest in the administration of justice, legality, the identity of the criminal, etc. The country began to search for new forms of crime prevention and the re-education of offenders. Legal psychology has taken an active part in solving these problems. In 1925, for the first time in the world, the State Institute for the Study of Crime and the Criminal was organized in our country. During the first five years of its existence, this institute published a significant number of works on legal psychology. Special offices for the study of the criminal and crime were organized in Moscow, Leningrad, Saratov, Kyiv, Kharkov, Minsk, Baku and other cities.

At the same time, research was carried out on the psychology of testimony, psychological examination and some other problems.

Interesting research was conducted by psychologist A.R. Luria in the laboratory of experimental psychology, established in 1927 at the Moscow Provincial Prosecutor's Office. He studied the possibilities of using the methods of experimental psychology to investigate crimes and formulated the principles of operation of the device, which later received the name "debunker of lies" (bark detector).

A significant contribution to the development of legal psychology of that time was made by such well-known specialists as V.M. Bekhterev and A.F. Horses.

Sections of criminal psychology, forensic reflexology and psychology were formed at the first and second All-Russian congresses on psychoneurology.

Already in the first years of Soviet power, lawyers and psychologists were persistently looking for new forms of combating crime. The new social system saw the criminal primarily as a person. This humanistic principle, which formed the basis of the Soviet legislative regulation of the issues of proof, naturally increased the interest in the psychological characteristics of people involved in the orbit of criminal justice, introduced psychology into the circle of problems, the study of which was important for the successful investigation of crimes.

The essence of forensic psychological research of that period, the modern Soviet psychologist A.V. Petrovsky described it as follows: “In the 1920s, “forensic psychology” was an authoritative and extensive field of science that studied the psychological prerequisites for a crime, the life and psychology of various groups of criminals, the psychology of testimonies and forensic psychological examination, the psychology of a prisoner ( prison psychology), etc.”

In those years, in Moscow and Ukraine, the works of Western scientists were translated and published: G. Gross, O. Lippmann, E. Stern, M. Goering, G. Münsterberg, A. Gelwig.

All this, of course, could not but affect forensic psychological research. So, in the work of A.Ya. Kantorovich "Psychology of testimonies" (1925) is influenced by the German psychologist W. Stern and his followers. In 1927, an article by N. Gladyshevsky “Our normal untruthfulness” appeared, in which the author concluded that the human senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch) are imperfect and, therefore, the causes that give rise to errors in the testimony of witnesses cannot be eliminated. Similar conclusions were contained in another article by Gladyshevsky, "Reflexology of Witness Testimony."

In 1922 Koni published the pamphlet Memory and Attention, which outlined the problems of witness testimony. A.R. Luria, in a number of his studies, subjected the essence of testimonies to a special psychological analysis. Much attention was paid to the psychology of testimonies by the well-known forensic psychologist A.E. Brusilovsky. Special attention should be paid to the studies of A.S. Tager, who did a lot for forensic psychology in general and for the psychology of witness testimony in particular. He believed that the criminal process is the most authentic research process and that the formation and study of the scientific foundations of its premises cannot but provide significant material for lawmaking.

December 17, 1928 A.S. Tager made a report "On the results and prospects of the study of forensic psychology" at the Council of the Psychological Institute. Together with A.E. Brusilovsky, S.V. Poznyshevsh, S.G. Gellerstein, he took an active part in the work of the First All-Union Congress for the Study of Human Behavior (Moscow, 1930). The congress had a special section on forensic psychology, where various issues of studying psychological problems related to the fight against crime were discussed.

Reports by A.S. Tager "On the results and prospects of the study of forensic psychology" and A.E. Brusilovsky "The main problems of the psychology of the defendant in the criminal process."

At the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology (now the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences) A.S. Tager led experimental work on the psychology of testimony. He compiled a research program that covered the formation of witness testimony from the process of perceiving facts and phenomena in various situations to their procedural consolidation. Tager was looking for forms of research that would reveal the features of the formation of testimony, taking into account the psychological skills of witnesses, which depend on the profession, age, emotional states, etc. But Tager considered it impossible to confine himself to such a differentiated study of testimony, despite their repeated repetition in various versions. In his opinion, a mass differentiated study should be combined with an individually differentiated study, taking into account the characteristics of each subject, for example, the individual characteristics of vision, hearing, memory when reproducing readings at various time intervals. A.S. Tager wrote: “Since in the study of the psychology of testimony we must eventually come to an investigation of the sources of error, both in the perceptions of witnesses, and in the preservation and processing of perceptions, and in the reproduction of testimony, including here the question of turning thoughts into words, insofar as we do not we can do without studying the work of each subject and comparing the results with his mental production in the form of a witness statement.

P The works of K.I. Sotonin, which covered the psychological aspects of the activities of the investigator and judge, the issues of obtaining truthful testimonies, methods for detecting involuntary lies in them.

The achievements of experimental psychology begin to be used during this period in judicial practice in Russia. In particular, V.M. Bekhterev and his students are actively involved in the problems of psychological diagnosis of criminals and witnesses. The first significant study in the field of forensic psychological examination was the book by A.E. Brusilovsky "Forensic psychological examination: its subject, methodology and subjects", published in 1939 in Kharkov. It contains examples of attempts to use forensic psychological expertise (FPE) in criminal proceedings.

Initially, during the formation of experimental psychology, attempts to use it for the needs of legal practice were reduced mainly to the development of methods for determining the reliability of the testimony of participants in a criminal process. For example, R. Luria in 1928, studying mental processes, develops an associated motor technique for the purpose of diagnosing affective traces. This technique is a prototype of the lie detector, which is now widely used in foreign legal practice.

In the works of that period, the personality of the offender was actively investigated. This had its positive sides, as it allowed to accurately and correctly qualify the committed crimes, taking into account all the objective and subjective moments. But, on the other hand, claiming to establish the reliability of the testimonies of the participants in the judicial-investigative process, the expert took on the task of determining how true or false these testimonies were. For example, on the basis of the subject's free story and answers to questions, expert psychologists drew conclusions about the presence or absence of the so-called "lying symptoms", objectively determined by one or another type of personality. It was assumed that the subjects, characterized by coldness, gloom, cynicism, are ready for a premeditated lie, distortion of facts. Therefore, the value of the testimony of such persons was considered doubtful. The testimonies of subjects with complexes of unfulfilled desires were considered unreliable.

It should be noted that at that time in psychological practice there were no effective scientifically based methods for a comprehensive study of personality, and therefore the expert problem could not be solved. But not only this was the main drawback of the SPE in that period. Giving an answer to the question about the unreliability of the testimony of the subject, the expert psychologist transgressed the boundaries of his special knowledge and procedural powers, thereby invading the competence of the investigation and the court.

The level of practical psychology at that time still lagged behind the demands of legal practice. The psychologist not only revealed the reliability of the testimony, but also practically determined the guilt of the person who committed the crime. Such an unjustified reassessment of the competence of psychological expertise led to subjective assessments and caused a negative attitude towards expert psychological research until the 1960s.

The misconceptions of some supporters of forensic psychological examination at that time received a well-deserved critical assessment of leading lawyers. However, against the background of this criticism, constructive proposals were not made that would contribute to the correct and strictly regulated application of psychological knowledge in the criminal process.

Most of the opponents of forensic psychological expertise also underestimated the fact that psychological science has been widely introduced into practice. And only in the late 50's - early 60's the question was raised about the need to restore the rights of legal psychology and forensic psychological examination. Thus, in the resolution of the plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR No. 6 of July 3, 1963 “On judicial practice in cases of juvenile crimes”, it was indicated that it is expedient to conduct a forensic psychological examination in ascertaining the ability of minors to fully realize the significance of their actions and determine the measure of their ability to manage their own actions. With this decision, the active use of psychological knowledge in investigative and judicial practice begins. The studies of domestic legal psychologists made it possible to set and solve psychological problems at a qualitatively new level in relation to the goals of the investigative and judicial process. In 1980, a methodological letter from the USSR Prosecutor's Office was developed and adopted, dedicated to the appointment and conduct of a forensic psychological examination. In Art. 78 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation notes: “An expert examination is appointed in cases where specialized knowledge in science, technology, art or craft is necessary in the course of an inquiry, preliminary investigation and trial ... Questions posed to an expert and his conclusions cannot go beyond the limits of the expert's special knowledge.

One of the particular tasks of the judicial and investigative process is the assessment of the personality of the accused, victim or witness. The task of an expert psychologist may include a general psychological characteristic of a person (the so-called psychological portrait). An expert, on the basis of his professional knowledge, reveals such properties and qualities of a person that allow him to draw a conclusion about the psychological appearance of a person. But his expert activity, in contrast to the activity of the court and the investigation, is not of a social and evaluative nature, but is based on scientifically substantiated provisions of psychology.

For example, in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, the general psychological characteristics of a person is a necessary component of any type of forensic investigation. A significant place in the activities of expert psychologists in these countries is occupied by the study of juvenile delinquents in order to determine their ability to bear criminal responsibility. According to German law, when considering each case of unlawful acts of minors, it must be established whether the minor can be held criminally responsible for his acts. A prerequisite for the ability to bear responsibility is considered to be the achievement by a teenager who has already turned 14 years old, the level mental development, which allows you to act in accordance with the requirements of society, consciously correlate your behavior with the rules of the hostel, norms and requirements of the law. The legislation thus reflected the notion that by the age of 14 most adolescents acquire the ability to consciously control their actions. Psychologists associate the absence or insufficient development of the ability of a teenager to realize the significance of his actions and to control them not only with a painful mental disorder, as forensic psychiatrists do, but also with some psychological characteristics of healthy adolescents. The subject of a forensic psychological examination also includes the causes and conditions that contributed to the commission of an offense by a teenager and recommendations of an educational nature. Based on an assessment of the individual psychological characteristics of a teenager, the social environment surrounding him, an expert psychologist can recommend placing a minor in an educational or medical institution, make a proposal to improve the activities of youth affairs bodies, and give specific advice to parents and educators. Thus, forensic psychological examination in Germany is involved in the prevention of juvenile crimes, in their correction and re-education. In other European countries, for example, in Poland, the individual psychological characteristics of witnesses, the conditions in which they perceived certain facts, the content of testimony, and some other circumstances are subject to examination by an expert psychologist. Only those phenomena that are determined by the level of development of psychological science can be subjected to expert research. One of the conditions for an objective conclusion is the scientific reliability of the application of special research methods.

In the early 1930s, research in forensic psychology, as well as research in the field of labor, social, and medical psychology, was stopped, and until the mid-1950s, the development of this science was interrupted.

In 1964, the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution “On measures for the further development of legal science and the improvement of legal education in the country”, which restored legal psychology in all law schools in the country. In 1965--1966. began reading special courses in legal psychology in law schools in Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk and some other cities. In 1966, the USSR Ministry of Higher and Secondary Education held an All-Union seminar on the teaching of legal psychology and the main problems of this science.

In May 1971, the first All-Union Conference on Forensic Psychology was held in Moscow.

In June 1971 in Tbilisi, at the 4th All-Union Congress of Psychologists, forensic psychology was presented as a separate section.

In the autumn of 1986, the All-Union Conference on Legal Psychology was held in the city of Tartu (Estonia). Representatives of all the republics and regions of the Soviet Union gathered and made presentations and reports at this conference. In these reports, the problems of the methodology and structure of legal psychology, the tasks of its individual branches (criminal psychology, the psychology of the victim, the psychology of the preliminary investigation, etc.), as well as the proposed structure of the university course of this discipline and the methodology of its teaching were widely discussed.

A significant contribution to the formation and development of legal psychology was made by V.V. Romanov and M.I. Enikeev: the first in the field of introducing legal psychology into the field of military justice, and the second in the field of organizing the teaching of this discipline in Moscow universities.

In June 1989 in Leningrad, on the basis of the IPC of prosecutors and investigators, an All-Union seminar-conference of teachers of legal psychology throughout the country was organized. Its participants considered and approved the proposal proposed in the report by prof. V.L. Vasiliev program of the university course of the subject "Legal Psychology". In accordance with this program, V.L. Vasiliev created the textbook "Legal Psychology" (M., 1991).

Currently, in our country in the field of legal psychology, a lot of research is being carried out with the same name in the following main areas:

* General questions of legal psychology (subject, system, methods, history, connections with other sciences).

* Legal consciousness and legal psychology.

* Professiograms of legal professions, psychological characteristics of legal activity.

* Criminal psychology. Psychology of the criminal and crime.

* Psychology of preliminary investigation.

* Psychology of criminal proceedings.

* Forensic psychological examination.

* Psychological characteristics of juvenile delinquents.

* Correctional labor psychology.

* Ethics and psychology of legal relations in the field of entrepreneurial activity.

* Psychological patterns of the emergence and development of the "shadow economy".

* Psychology of organized crime, etc.

Such, in the most general terms, is the history of the origin and development of legal psychology.

4. Fundamentals of Legal Psychology

Methodological foundations of legal psychology. Principles of system analysis in legal psychology. The object of study of legal psychology and the psychology of legal labor. Methodological principles of legal psychology. Stages of psychological research of law enforcement activity.

Tasks of legal psychology. Psychological culture of a lawyer. professional deformation. Development of professional qualities.

Subject and system of legal psychology. The structure of legal psychology. General and special parts of legal psychology. History of development and current state of legal psychology.

Prospects for the development of legal psychology. Professional direction. Investigative-psychological direction. The use of a psychologist in the process of solving crimes.

5. Methodological foundations of legal psychology

Legal psychology is a scientific discipline that focuses on the problems of harmonizing a person and law as elements of a single system. A systematic approach contributes to the successful development of legal psychology.

Legal psychology includes various areas of scientific knowledge, is an applied science and equally belongs to both psychology and jurisprudence. In the field of social relations regulated by the rule of law, the mental activity of people acquires peculiar features, which are due to the specifics of human activity in the field of legal regulation.

Being an active member of society, a person performs actions that obey certain rules. These rules, obligatory for a particular set of people, are called norms of behavior, which are established by the people themselves in the interests of either the whole society or individual groups and classes.

All norms of behavior are usually divided into technical and social. The former regulate human activity in the use of natural resources (rates of consumption of fuel, electricity, water, etc.) and tools. Social norms regulate human actions in relations between people and include customs, morality and law. All social norms, based on the assessments accepted in society, require either refraining from certain actions or taking some active action.

The methodological feature of legal psychology is that the center of gravity in cognition is transferred to the individual as the subject of activity. Thus, if the law primarily singles out the offender in a person, then legal psychology examines the person in the offender, witness, victim, etc.

Legal psychology is characterized by a systematic study of the process of activity in conjunction with the structure of the personality and the system of legal norms. Only the systemic method makes it possible to analyze the interaction of these structures in sufficient depth and to reveal the main psychological patterns of such interaction, to give a fairly complete description of the process, taking into account all its elements.

For legal psychology, it is productive to apply one of the principles of system analysis - the hierarchy of systems - the essence of which is that any system is considered as part of another, wider system, and its elements - as independent systems. This principle allows, on the one hand, to focus on the multilevel organization of the reality under study, and on the other hand, it provides an opportunity to focus the study on a certain qualitatively unique phenomenon.

Of interest is the statement of M.F. Orzikha: “The “behavioral” problems of jurisprudence should be developed in the light of the theory of social and legal activity of the individual. This provides an opportunity not only to determine the effectiveness of legal means, the degree of achievement of the goals of the legislator, but gives a more complete picture of the individual as an actor, the subject of legal activity, the mechanism of legal influence on the individual, the social and personal potential of law and the effectiveness of its social action at various stages of deployment. legal activity (in the process of making a decision, implementing a legal action, its legal assessment). On this basis, it is possible to theoretically and specifically sociologically study the intensity of the legal activity of a person, determine its measure, degree in a democratic political and legal regime, develop recommendations for the intensification of this activity ”(Orzikh M. F., 1975. P. 48).

The function and purpose of individual parts can only be understood in the context of the whole. Psychology has gone mainly along the path of differentiation of the whole, analysis of parts and their relationships with each other.

The object of study of legal psychology and the psychology of legal labor is a person as a subject of law enforcement and a participant in legal relations. In this aspect, a person is studied by jurisprudence, philosophy, psychology and a number of other sciences. The task of legal psychology is, first of all, to investigate and establish the psychological patterns of human activity and personality in the field of legal regulation and develop practical recommendations for improving the efficiency of law enforcement

The methodology of this discipline is different in that the personality is studied in the dynamics of the offense, in the process of its reconstruction based on the materials of the investigation and court case. This provides a unique opportunity to learn a number of mental patterns, which are impossible or extremely difficult to observe and study under other conditions (the action of a person when his life is in mortal danger, in emergency situations, in criminogenic conflicts, etc.). This circumstance makes it possible to widely use the data of legal psychology in related psychological disciplines.

One of the methodological principles of legal psychology is a personal approach. Legal psychology always has a personality as an object of study, since the system of legal norms is addressed to it. This allows you to build a personality structure and highlight such elements of it that are significant in criminogenic situations, in various aspects of law enforcement, in developing a strategy for the resocialization of offenders, etc.

One of the important tasks of legal psychology is the allocation of internal personal prerequisites, which, in interaction with certain external factors, can create a criminogenic situation for a given individual, i.e., the allocation of criminogenic personal qualities and prerequisites.

In this regard, the development of the general psychological theory of activity, which is leading in Russian science (L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev, A.R. Luria, A.V. Zaporozhets, and others), is of particular value.

Activity is one of the main psychological categories. However, there is no universally accepted definition.

S.L. Rubinstein notes the organic connection between human activity and consciousness. In his opinion, activity is “a process through which one or another attitude of a person to the world around him is realized - to other people, to the tasks that life sets before him” (Rubinshtein S.L., 1957. P. 256) .

Any activity includes a goal, the conditions in which it is given, the ways and means of achieving it, the motive for which a person strives to achieve a certain goal and which itself acts as a remotely higher goal, and, finally, the result of the activity. A person's personality is characterized primarily by those basic, cardinal goals that are the meaning of a person's life and the driving forces of his activity and behavior. The main goals integrate the personality. It is known that even W. James defined a person as a "fighter for goals." Personality, indeed, really exists only in the process of achieving goals, developing action plans, searching for ways to implement them, evaluating results, etc. To paraphrase the well-known position of S.L. Rubinshtein, we can say that the main way of existence of a person is a process, activity.

A.N. Leontiev believed that the content of activity is “a unit of life mediated by mental reflection, the real function of which is to orient the subject in the objective world” (Leontiev A.N., 1972).

K.K. Platonov gives the following definition: “Human activity or, which is a synonym, conscious activity is such a form of relationship with the environment in which a person carries out a consciously set goal ... The structure of any activity can be laid down in such a general scheme: goal - motive --method--result" (Platonov K.K., 1972, p. 150-151).

The study of complex, multi-purpose intellectual activity (for example, legal) is possible only with the inclusion in the process of research of the actor himself, his personality, and the results of such studies make it possible to solve the most topical issues systems of psychology of legal labor. At the initial stage of such research, it is important to focus on the most typical aspects of law enforcement. Knowledge of the psychological patterns of the activity of this profession creates the prerequisites for identifying patterns that are characteristic of legal activity in general and law enforcement in particular.

An example of the implementation of the system method in the psychology of legal work is a professiogram, which is a complex hierarchical structure. Each of the six sides of the professiogram reflects, firstly, a certain cycle of professional activity, and secondly, it implements personal qualities, skills, abilities, as well as knowledge that ensure professional success at this level of activity (Vasiliev V.L., 2000).

The study of integral individuality (for example, the personality of an investigator) is carried out on the basis of a systematic approach. One of the main methodological requirements of this approach is that the characterization of the system as a whole requires different concepts than the characterization of individual hierarchical levels. A systematic approach requires the establishment of multidimensional relationships between many different indicators, and regression (correlation) curves reflect the relationship between only two parameters. In this regard, the statement of V.S. Merlin that “if a psychologist squeezed a hundred graphs out of a person, this does not mean at all that he has known his individuality” (Merlin V.S., 1978, p. 17).

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§ 2. Brief historical outline of the development of legal psychology

Legal psychology is one of the relatively young branches of psychological science. The first attempts to systematically solve certain problems of jurisprudence by the methods of psychology date back to the 18th century.

In the development of legal psychology, the following three stages can be distinguished.

1. Early history (XVIII - first half of the XIX century).

2. The initial formation of legal psychology as a science (late XIX - early XX century).

3. History of legal psychology of the XX century.

Early history of legal psychology. Like most of the new sciences that arose at the junction of various branches of human knowledge, legal psychology in the early stages of its development was not an independent science and did not have special personnel. Individual psychologists, lawyers, and even scientists who specialized in other fields of knowledge have tried to solve issues related to this discipline. The initial stage of development is associated with the need to turn the legal sciences to psychology in order to solve specific problems that could not be solved by traditional methods of jurisprudence. Legal psychology, like many other branches of psychological science, has gone from purely speculative constructions to scientific and experimental research.

One of the first authors who considered a number of forensic psychological aspects and the idea of ​​humanism was M.M. Shcherbatov (1733 - 1790). In his writings, he demanded that laws be developed taking into account the individual characteristics of a person's personality; one of the first scientists raised the issue of parole. MM. Shcherbatov positively assessed the labor factor in the re-education of a criminal.

The spread of the idea of ​​correction and re-education of the criminal made it necessary to turn to psychology for its scientific substantiation. Above this at the beginning of the XIX century. V.K. worked in Russia. Elpatievskiy, P.D. Lodiy, L.S. Gordienko, Chr. Stelzer and others.

In the works of German scientists I. Hofbauer "Psychology in its main applications in judicial life" (1808) and I. Friedrich "Systematic Guide to Forensic Psychology" (1835), an attempt was made to use the data of psychology in the investigation of crimes.

In the second half of the XIX century. not only the successful development of the natural sciences, but also the growth of crime in all the leading capitalist countries served as an impetus for the further revival and expansion of forensic psychological research.

Formation of legal psychology as a science. In the second half of the XIX century. under the influence of the rapid development of general and especially experimental (measurement) psychology began to develop quite intensively criminal psychology. A significant role in this was played by the works of the Italian prison psychiatrist C. Lombroso, the creator of the biopsychological direction in the study of the personality of the criminal. In his theory of the “innate” criminal, who, due to his atavistic features, cannot be corrected, C. Lombroso proceeded from the fact that criminal behavior is a kind of psychopathology. This interpretation of criminal behavior led to the fact that for many years criminal psychology closely associated itself with forensic psychiatry and became its second name.

End of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. associated with the intensive development of psychology, psychiatry and a number of legal disciplines (primarily criminal law). A number of scientists representing these sciences at that time occupied progressive positions (I.M. Sechenov, V.M. Bekhterev, S.S. Korsakov, V.P. Serbsky, A.F. Koni and others).

The development of psychology, psychiatry and law led to the need to formalize legal psychology as an independent scientific discipline. P.I. Kovalevsky in 1899 raised the question of the separation of psychopathology and legal psychology, as well as the introduction of these sciences into the course of legal education.

At the beginning of the XX century. experimental research methods are beginning to be used in legal psychology. A significant number of works of this period are devoted to the psychology of testimonies.

The most thorough work on forensic psychology belonged to Hans Gross. In his "Criminal Psychology", published in 1898, the results of general pathological experimental studies of a number of psychologists were used.

In 1902, experiments to determine the degree of reliability of testimonies were carried out by the German psychologist William Stern. Based on his data, the scientist argued that the testimony is fundamentally unreliable, vicious, since "forgetting is the rule, and remembering is the exception."

The views of V. Stern caused a stormy reaction among Russian lawyers as well. His ardent supporter in Russia was the professor of St. Petersburg University O.B. Goldovsky, who wrote about this: “V. Stern made a series of experiments on the reliability of witness testimony. Experiments gave him the right to make such a position: unmistakable readings will be the exception, while readings with errors should be considered the rule. This position can be considered completely established.

Research on forensic psychology was also carried out in other countries: in France - by Claparede, in the USA - by Meyers, and also by Cattell, who in 1895 conducted an experiment with the memory of students, and then proposed to compile an index of the degrees of accuracy of witness testimony.

M.M. also worked on the psychology of testimonies in Russia. Khomyakov, M.P. Bukhvalova, A.N. Bershtein, E.M. Kulischer and others. In 1905, the collection “Problems of Psychology. Lies and testimonies. Many of the articles in the collection were permeated with the idea of ​​the unreliability of testimonies.

History of legal psychology in 20th century Late 19th – early 20th century characterized by the sociologization of criminological knowledge. Then the causes of crime as a social phenomenon began to be studied by bourgeois sociologists J. Quetelet, E. Durkheim, P. Dupoty, M. Weber, L. Levy-Bruhl and other authors who, using the method of social statistics, overcame the anthropological approach in explaining the nature of criminal behavior , showing the dependence of deviant behavior on the social conditions of the existence of society. These works were, of course, a progressive phenomenon of their time.

A solid statistical analysis of various abnormal manifestations over a certain historical period of time (crime, suicide, prostitution), carried out, in particular, by J. Quetelet, E. Durkheim, showed that the number of anomalies in people's behavior every time inevitably increased during periods of wars, economic crises , social upheaval. This convincingly refuted the theory of the "innate" criminal, pointing to the social roots of this phenomenon.

These facts are reflected in a number of socio-psychological theories of crime by American social psychologists of that period - R. Merton, J. Starland, D. Mats, T. Sykes, E. Gluck. Their works present diverse approaches to explaining the nature of delinquent behavior through various socio-psychological mechanisms and phenomena that regulate the interaction and behavior of people in a group.

A distinctive feature of modern criminological knowledge is a systematic approach to the consideration and study of the causes and factors of deviant behavior, the development of the problem at the same time by representatives of various sciences: lawyers, sociologists, psychologists, physicians.

In the twentieth century there have been debates about the role of biological factors in criminal behavior. However, numerous studies have led to the conclusion that there is some connection of chromosomal abnormalities, but with mental illness, and not with crime.

Currently, in Western criminology, a large place is occupied by socio-psychological theories of crime, which explain the socio-psychological mechanisms of assimilation of the so-called delinquent morality by mechanisms for neutralizing moral control, defense mechanisms. Social psychologists in the United States, who adhere to these theories, have made a number of rather original attempts to explain the ways in which a delinquent subculture is formed among minors.

These include the theory of "social anomaly" by R. Merton, which is built on the hypothesis of withering away, the falling away of moral norms in delinquent behavior (sociology of crime); the theory of "neutralization" by D. Mats and T. Sykes, who believe that the offender as a whole shares the generally accepted norms of morality, but justifies his criminal behavior.

The development of legal psychology in the early years of Soviet power was facilitated by a great public interest in the administration of justice, legality, the identity of the offender, etc. The country began to search for new forms of crime prevention and re-education of offenders. Legal psychology has taken an active part in solving these problems. In 1925, for the first time in the world, the State Institute for the Study of Crime and the Criminal was organized in the USSR. During the first five years of its existence, a significant amount of work on legal psychology was published. Special offices for the study of the criminal and crime were organized in Moscow, Leningrad, Saratov, Kyiv, Kharkov, Minsk, Baku and other cities.

A significant contribution to the development of legal psychology of that time was made by such well-known specialists as V.M. Bekhterev and A.F. Horses.

At the same time, research was carried out on the psychology of testimonies, psychological examination and other problems.

Interesting research was conducted by psychologist A.R. Luria in the laboratory of experimental psychology, established in 1927 at the Moscow Provincial Prosecutor's Office. He studied the possibilities of using the methods of experimental psychology for investigating crimes and formulated the principles of operation of the device, which later received the name of the “lie-detector” (bark detector).

December 17, 1928 A.S. Tager made a report "On the results and prospects of the study of forensic psychology" at the Council of the Psychological Institute.

In 1964, the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution “On measures for the further development of legal science and the improvement of legal education in the country”, which restored legal psychology in all law schools in the country. In 1965–1966 began reading special courses in legal psychology in law schools in Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk and some other cities. In 1966, the USSR Ministry of Higher and Secondary Education held an All-Union seminar on the teaching of legal psychology.

In May 1971, the first All-Union Conference on Forensic Psychology was held in Moscow. In June 1971 in Tbilisi, at the 4th All-Union Congress of Psychologists, forensic psychology was presented as a separate section.

A significant contribution to the formation and development of legal psychology was made by V.V. Romanov and M.I. Enikeev: the first in the field of introducing legal psychology into the field of military justice, and the second in the field of organizing the teaching of this discipline in Moscow universities.

Currently, in the field of legal psychology, a lot of research is being carried out in the following main areas:

  • general questions of legal psychology (subject, system, methods, history, connections with other sciences);
  • legal awareness and legal psychology;
  • professiograms of legal professions, psychological characteristics of legal activity;
  • criminal psychology;
  • psychology of the criminal and crime;
  • psychology of preliminary investigation;
  • psychology of criminal justice;
  • forensic psychological examination;
  • psychological characteristics of juvenile delinquents;
  • correctional labor psychology.
  1. General psychology: Course of lectures / Comp. E.I. Rogov. - M., 1995.
  2. Shikhantsov G.G. Legal psychology. - Grodno, 1998.
  3. Vasiliev V.L. Legal psychology. - St. Petersburg, 2000.
  4. Vasiliev V.L. Legal psychology: Proc. for universities. - M., 1991.

The formation of legal psychology as a science was determined by the fact that the main problems of jurisprudence (the identity of the offender, pre-trial investigation and judicial proceedings of a criminal case, re-education of convicts) could not be solved at a purely legal or purely psychological level, but required the development of specialized methodological tools for studying and theoretical development problems on the verge of legal and psychological science. That is why legal psychology is fully concerned with W. Herbart's statement that psychology has a long prehistory and a very short history. Even in the treatise of the ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus (IV-III centuries BC) "Characters" is a description of individual antisocial traits inherent in certain types of personality.

In historical retrospect, the following main stages in the development of legal psychology can be distinguished:

I - descriptive (from antiquity to the beginning of the 19th century);

II - comparative-analytical (XIX century);

III - natural science (from the beginning of the 20th century to the present).

The use of psychological knowledge to ensure justice and its use in law enforcement activities has ancient history. The trials of the participants in the process, sometimes of a mystical nature, but to a large extent synthesized the empirical experience of many generations, took place already in ancient and medieval criminal proceedings. They were based on the application of knowledge of human psychology, its various manifestations to obtain truthful information. The prototype of testing, a kind of empirical research in investigating crimes and bringing guilt was, for example, testing with rice in ancient China or there among the peoples of Africa. However, both in the ancient and in the medieval process, the main evidence was a personal confession of the deed.

The search process, as a secular (more refined) version of the inquisition, did not use psychological data, based solely on secret written evidence. Personal confession as the main evidence was acquired in all possible ways, including with the use of torture and torture. Simultaneously with physical methods, psychological methods were also used to influence suspects in order to obtain a confession at will, the basis of which were generalized empirical data and everyday psychology.

In order to force a person to testify, a shock situation was specially created, an environment that provoked the manifestation of emotions. For example, the suspect was suddenly brought into a dimly lit room where the corpse was, and there they were forced to tell the truth, using his state of shock.

The inquisitorial medieval search process was replaced by a competitive process (the ideas of which originated in philosophy, sociology, the theory of law) with its inherent publicity and oral proceedings. Witness testimony and information about the identity of the defendant, victim, plaintiff, defendant, and the like are of great importance. For a correct assessment of the testimony of the suspect, the accused and other participants in the process, obtaining data about their personality in criminal, and then in the civil bourgeois trials, there is a need to attract and use psychological knowledge.

Thus, forensic psychology began to develop intensively in Europe. In 1792 the work comes out K. Wkartshausen "About the need psychological analysis criminal law concepts"; in the first half of the 19th century, the works of I. Hofbauer "Psychology and its application to judicial life" and I. Fredreich "Systematic Guide to Forensic Psychology", which covered the psychological aspects of the problems of the offender's personality, the individualization of guilt and punishment, as well as the psychology of criminal justice itself.

Middle and second half of the 19th century. was marked in Europe by a significant increase in interest in criminal psychology, due primarily to the development of anthropological ideas of the determination of criminal behavior (C. Lombroso, E. Ferri, R. Garofalo). In the book "Criminal Man, studied on the basis of anthropology, forensic medicine and turmoznavstva" (1876) C. Lombroso attempted to determine the material substrate of the crime, expressing the opinion that the offender is an atavistic type that has a number of physical and, accordingly, mental traits that bring him closer to savages, primitive people or even animals. In his opinion, it is impossible to correct a criminal, just as it is impossible to tame and domesticate a predator, therefore the only justified means of combating crime is the earliest possible isolation of a representative of a criminal type from society.

E. Ferri and R. Garofalo added to the list of biological determinants of crime, but at the same time remained on the positions of the anthropological school. So, E. Ferry in his work "Crime as a social phenomenon" identified three groups of factors that give rise to crime: anthropological (individual), physical and social. The latter included: civil status, occupation, place of birth, class position, education and upbringing. R. Garofalo, noting that the offender has the features of "savages" and mental underdevelopment, he divided crimes into "natural" and "artificial", caused by disrespect for the suffering of other people and their property rights.

A notable achievement in the development of legal psychology was the work of G. Gross "A Guide for Investigators" and "Criminal Psychology". The author for the first time argued the need to single out a separate area of ​​​​legal psychology - forensic psychology, in the structure of which he singled out "subjective psychology", by which he understood the mental activity of a judge , and "objective psychology" - the mental activity of those participants in the process that provide the judge with material for the final conclusions and judgments necessary for sentencing (the accused, the witness, the victim).

At the beginning of the XX century. saw the light of the work of L. Blunelli "Consciousness of the accused" (in 1902), M. Worst "Experimental studies of the reliability of testimony" (1907). G. Reicha "On the directions of psychology" (1912), K. Marbe "Principles of Forensic Psychology" (1913), A. Lipman "Fundamentals of Psychology for Lawyers" (1914), which dealt with the theoretical and practical issues of using psychology in jurisprudence. Since 1907, the famous scientist E. Clapared read in Geneva, "A course of lectures on legal psychology."

The history of legal psychology in our country has more than three centuries. Three stages of its development can be distinguished:

1) the end of the XVII century. - First half of the 18th century. (Enlightenment) - the first attempts to penetrate the psychology (soul) of the criminal, critically comprehend the psychology of people, administer justice;

2) the end of the XVIII century. - Last quarter of the 19th century. - Characterized by the beginning of reading courses in legal psychology;

3) XX century - the beginning of the XXI century. - Formation of legal psychology as a branch of psychological science and its formation as an experimental discipline.

Beginning with Peter I, on the territory of the Russian Empire, criminal law and procedural issues are considered in a certain sense through the prism of psychological knowledge.

So, Pososhkov I.T. suggested various ways interrogation of witnesses and accused, recommended classifying criminals according to the degree of their "corruption". He said that there was no awareness of the law among the masses of the people. Tatishchev V.M. He believed that many laws are violated out of ignorance, and they must be studied from an early age, when the child's psyche is most favorable for this. prince Shcherbatov MM. argued that the legislator must know the human heart and create laws taking into account the psychology of the criminal and the people. He was one of the first to raise the issue of the early release of the offender, corrected himself, and believed that punishment should be difficult.

At the beginning of the XVIII century. opinions were expressed about the need to abolish the bloody forms of criminal repression, torture and change the attitude towards the personality of the criminal. The spokesman for these views was, first of all, OM Radishchev. Ushakov F.V. in his work "On the Law and Purpose of Punishment" he revealed the psychological foundations of the impact on the offender of punishment, considering the most important to create conditions for the emergence of a feeling of remorse in him.

Ukrainian philosopher-educator and lawyer L. Lodius (1764-1829 gg.) In the work "Logical attitudes aimed at understanding and distinguishing between true and false" (1815) Tried to substantiate criminal law concepts with the help of psychology. He recognized only those punishments that act as a means of psychological coercion, believed that punishment should correspond to the spirit of the crime. The same opinion was held by V. Elpatyevsky, G. Gordienko. x. Stelzer became the first who began teaching the course "Criminal psychology" (Moscow and Tartu universities, 1806-1812).

The origin and development of legal psychology in Russia in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. is connected with the understanding by progressive scientists and public figures of the need to solve criminal law problems with the involvement of psychological knowledge. This position was expressed, in particular, by lyceum teachers A.S. Pushkin A. Kunitsyn and A. Galich. A. Kuni-tsin believed that the purpose of punishment should be the correction and re-education of the offender, the prevention of crime. BUT. Galich wrote one of the first works in Russia on characterology, where he noted that those who know his psychology and character should punish the criminal. Thus, he believed that the judge should also be a good psychologist.

The practical orientation of legal psychology was especially determined in the 50-70s of the XIX century. Yes, S. Barsheva work "A Look at the Science of Criminal Law" (1858) noted that not a single issue of criminal law can be resolved without the help of psychology: "If the judge does not know psychology, then it will be a trial of living beings, but of corpses." In his opinion, psychology is needed not only by judges, but also by investigators, because with the abolition of torture, only one means of solving a crime remains at their disposal - the impact on the psyche of the criminal. Psychology is also needed by the legislator, whom it will teach to see criminals not as an indomitable beast, but as a person who needs to be re-educated, and not to act on her "with a sword and prison." In 1871 A. Frese published the first work in Russia, "Essay on Forensic Psychology", defining its subject as "notes on legal issues about normal and abnormal manifestations of mental life."

Progressive lawyers of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. (L. Vladimirov, D. Drel. S Gogel, A. Koni, L. Petrazhitsky, V. Chizh, M. Yadrintsev and others), realizing that only psychology can determine the patterns that determine human behavior, they believed that legal psychology should form the scientific basis of criminal law, that is, on its basis, the doctrine of the subject of the crime, sanity, and the content of punishment should be built.

Yes. Professor L. Vladimirov, teacher of Kharkov, Moscow and St. Petersburg universities in his works "On the Importance of Doctors-Experts in Criminal Proceedings" (in 1870), "Psychological Features of the Criminal According to the Latest Research" (1877.), criminal court "(in 1901) substantiated the need to involve experts in criminal proceedings - specialists in psychology who would have the right to familiarize themselves with the case materials, examine the defendant, and the participants in the process.

In 1881, the outstanding Russian lawyer A. Horses gave a public lecture "F. M. Dostoevsky as a criminalist", where he emphasized the importance of the internal content of the crime. He noted that the criminal in the theory of criminal law is usually regarded as "abstract", devoid of flesh and blood. And such an abstract criminal is assigned "abstract punishment". In continuation of this thought, the psychologist N. Grotto advocated the development of empirical psychology, should study the specific offender. In 1890, he wrote: "A psychologist is never called for advice when it is necessary to penetrate into the intent, designs and deeds of a criminal."

Of interest are the works of D. drills, who noted that psychology and law deal with the same phenomena - "the laws of a person's conscious life." Lacking its own means to study them, law must turn to psychology. Psychology is the basis on which law alone can be built, otherwise it loses its significance as an applied science. In The Private Psychology of Crime (1890) he argued that the first organic moment that contributes to crime is the weakening of the ability of criminals "to be consciously guided by foresight of the future"

The works of V. Chyzh "Medical Study of the Criminal" (1894), "Criminal Man before the Court of Medical Science" (1894), "Criminal Anthropology" (1895) is a development of the theory of Ch. Lombroso, but his own ideas need to involve knowledgeable in psychology and psychiatric individuals to participate in criminal proceedings were reasonable and valuable.

S. Gogel in the books "Jury and Expertise" (1894), "The Role of Society in the Fight against Crime" (1904), "The Course of Criminal Policy in Connection with Criminal Sociology" (1910) made an attempt to combine biological and sociological approaches to the study of crimes and the offender, expressing an opinion on the need to attract special psychological knowledge to criminal proceedings. N. Yadrintsev put forward the idea of ​​re-educating criminals under the influence of public opinion and positive moral impact.

Petersburg and Warsaw Universities L. Petrazhitsky in books "On the Motives of Human Actions" (1904) and "Introduction to the Study of Law and Morality. Emotional Psychology" (1908) He argued that only mental processes really exist, and other socio-historical formations are only their external projections - " emotional fantasies. He believed that state-legal and other sciences have to rely on the analysis of psychological phenomena. Social progress, the development of law, morality, aesthetics, and even the transition from legal system slavery to the right of free labor and competition - these are all the consequences and results of the "progress of the human psyche."

L. Petrazhitsky divided the right into positive and intuitive. Positive law is normative, sanctioned by the state. However, the norm becomes law not from the moment of sanctioning, but after its comprehension, acceptance by a person, manifestation of her emotional attitude to law. Intuitive law - as opposed to the official one - is more dynamic in nature, carries a certain emotional code, a semantic substance. This is a reality that is not perceived through sensory channels, but is a system of established value orientations, types of experiences, etc. Intuitive right is absolute, and positive right is relative.

At the same time (the second half of the XLX and the beginning of the 20th century), experimental research in legal psychology was becoming increasingly important. The conditions for this were created by the efforts of practitioners in the field of experimental physiology and psychiatry (I. Sechenov, V. Bekhterev, S. Korsakov, V. Serbsky, V. Kan-Dinskaya and others).

Under the leadership of V. Bekhterev, the first experimental study of juvenile delinquents was carried out, the results of which are presented in the work "On the mental performance of juvenile delinquents" (1903). In 1904, an experiment to test the authenticity of witnesses' testimonies: the audience of the play of the Moscow Art Academic Theater "Julius Caesar" was asked to answer 15 questions that concerned the scene of the murder. 505 letters with answers were received, which made it possible to formulate certain conclusions.

The issue of testimonies, especially of minors, was the subject of study by many scientists of that time. The results, certifying their imperfection (unreliability), prompted the search for other ways to obtain evidence-based information, in particular, with the help of experimental psychology. In particular, works began to appear on the use of suggestion and hypnosis in criminal proceedings. With the participation of V. Bekhterev in 1896, hypnosis was applied to the suspect in the murder of her husband Maria Rumyantseva, who committed the crime as a result of the suggestion of the paramedic I. Khrisanfov, her lover and family doctor.

In 1902, V. Bekhterev's book On the Experimental Study of Criminals was published, where it is emphasized that it is necessary to investigate criminals primarily "from a psychological point of view, and especially from an experimental psychological point of view." In his opinion, the immediate causes of the crime will never lose "their psychological interest and practical significance." His later work "The Objective-Psychological Method as Applied to the Study of Crime" (1912) is devoted to the methodology of the psychological study of criminals, in which he divided criminals into several groups according to psychological characteristics: a) criminals by passion (impulsive and impulsive); b) criminals with insufficient sensitivity, without moral criteria, commit crimes intentionally; c) criminals with intellectual disabilities; d) criminals with a weak will (laziness, alcoholism, etc.).

After the Great October Revolution, for quite a long time (1917-1934) legal psychology in our country covered a wide range of problems and was an authoritative branch of science. A. Koni taught legal psychology at Petrograd University, the world's first State Institute for the Study of Crime and the Criminal was created (in 1925), a significant number of studies were carried out and more than 300 works were published in the first four years of its existence. In 1926-1927. The "Administrative Bulletin of the NKVD" published articles by A. Luria about the instrumental method for diagnosing a person's involvement in a crime, where the possibility of introducing a domestic polygraph is justified. At this time, books were published on the problems of the profession of an investigator and an operative worker (Kazan, 1925), crowd psychology (Kharkov, 1929), etc.

A well-known scientist, professor of Moscow University S. Poznyshev published a number of works on penitentiary and criminal law, re-education of prisoners. His book "Criminal psychology. Criminal types" (1926) was the result of research on the identity of the offender and the causes of crime.

S. Poznyshev believed that crime is generated and changed under the influence of certain conditions, as well as from what the body inherited from ancestors, therefore, not a single crime can be explained solely by external causes, ignoring the individual properties of the criminal. He rejected the theories of C. Lom-Broz, E. Ferry, R. Garofalo and their supporters, noting that the idea of ​​a born criminal is unfounded: a crime is always a manifestation of a complex mental experience, a person’s mood, in which various traits of his character are revealed. So, an innate tendency to crime is psychologically and logically impossible. At the same time, he emphasized that the main elements of the mental constitution are the mental inclinations, worldview and character of a person. S. Poznyshev defined the criminal type as a combination of character traits and views of a person, incline it to a crime, because of which a person embarks on a criminal path, while others categorically refuse it.

Other works devoted to general theoretical issues of legal psychology were also published. Yes, A. Olginsky, defining the subject of science in the administration of justice, he pointed out that it can be called "criminal psychology". Its scope should include the psychology of evidence, the psychology of crime and its causes, the psychology of the offender, and the psychology of sentencing. A. Brusilovsky wrote that one should distinguish between criminal psychology and forensic psychology. Under the criminal he understood the one that studies the crime and the personality of the criminal after he is sentenced. From that time on, the prisoner becomes the object of psychological and pathopsychological post-trial research in special scientific penitentiary institutions. He defined forensic psychology as a set of scientific and psychological knowledge aimed at highlighting, posing and experimentally developing procedural psychological problems, which include the psychology of testimonies, the psychology of the accused, the psychology of other participants in the process (defenders, experts, civil plaintiffs, etc.) , psychology of the court and judicial work, issues that arise in the judicial audience, the boundaries of the study in a criminal court, the presumption of innocence and its role, forms and types of suggestion in the investigation and trial of criminal cases, and the like. A. Brusilovsky also owns works on evidence in criminal proceedings, the psychology of the testimony of juvenile witnesses.

The breadth of research in the field of legal psychology in the 20s of the XX century. determined the place of legal psychology among the psychological sciences. Since then, scientific meetings have had special sections devoted to the development and achievements of legal psychology. So, at the I All-Union Congress of Psychoneurologists, which took place in 1923, there was a section on criminal psychology. It heard a number of reports on the application of psychology in various areas of jurisprudence. The resolutions of the congress indicated the need to create laboratories at penitentiary institutions for conducting criminal psychological research, and to increase the staff of forensic psychologists. At the II All-Union Congress of Psychoneurologists. which took place in 1924, there was a section on forensic reflexology and psychology.

At the First All-Union Congress of Psychologists, dedicated to the study of human behavior (1930), presentations were made by A. Brusilovsky ("The main problems of the psychology of the defendant in the criminal process") and A. Tager ("On the conclusions and prospects for the study of forensic psychology")... The latter identified the following main sections of legal psychology:

a) criminal psychology - studies the behavior of the offender;

b) process psychology - studies organization and activity

c) penitentiary psychology - studies the behavior of persons serving sentences and those who are entrusted with the functions of supervision and re-education of convicts.

At this stage in the development of legal psychology, it was characterized, as for the psychology and jurisprudence of that time, by the struggle of opinions, approaches, and methodological bases. Legal psychology has not avoided the mistakes inherent in psychological science: biologism, reflexological and reactological stratifications, and the like. For such a young sphere of scientific knowledge, they were inevitable, but correctable. Unfortunately, at that time significant political changes took place in the USSR, which prevented the further development of psychological science. After the adoption of the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On Pedological Perversions in the System of the People's Commissariat for Education", psychological research institutions were closed or reorganized, the development of psychological problems in the social sphere, in production, in management, etc. was stopped. Psychology actually submitted to pedagogy. And this situation lasted for about thirty years. Zrozumlo that any psychological research on the border with jurisprudence was also not carried out, psychology was isolated from the problems of forensic science, investigative and judicial activities.

The persecution of legal psychology began with the article by S. Bulatov "The Revival of C. Lombroso in Soviet Criminology", published in the first issue of the journal "Revolution of Law" for 1929. It criticized the activities of research institutions in the field of studying the personality of a criminal, the practice of attracting psychiatrists and psychologists to criminological research, after which the appropriate conclusions were drawn: the offices for studying the personality of the criminal were liquidated, and psychological and pathopsychological research was prohibited. A significant part of what was "acquired" in legal psychology and connected with the "technology" of work, moved into the courses of criminology and criminal procedure, as well as into critical sections devoted to psychological theories of the subjective side of the crime in criminal law.

To correct the situation after the inflicted in the 30s of the XX century. strikes, it took more than 30 years. Only in 1965 was the course "Psychology (general and judicial)" introduced into the curriculum for the training of lawyers in higher educational institutions; detailed applied psychological research for law enforcement purposes, law enforcement and preventive activities; questions of legal psychology began to be developed in order to ensure the educational process. In 1966, an All-Union Seminar on Forensic Psychology was held, at which issues of teaching psychology in universities, as well as problems of forensic psychological research, were discussed. At that time, programs and methodological recommendations on forensic psychology were created for universities of 1 secondary specialized legal educational institutions, where a psychology course was also introduced.

In 1968, at the 3rd All-Union Congress of Psychologists, a significant number of reports were heard on the psychological problems of fighting crime, although there was no separate section of forensic psychology at the congress.

The revival of forensic psychology was at first carried out by individual enthusiasts. Only in 1969. In the main criminological research institution of the country - the All-Union Institute for the Study of the Causes and Development of Measures for the Prevention of Crime (created in 1963) - the sector of forensic psychology begins to work. His task was to study the psychological aspects of individual and public legal consciousness, the study psychological factors crime, the psychology of the personality of the offender, the psychological foundations of investigative and judicial practice.

The results of scientific research are reflected in monographs, textbooks, articles by scientists and practitioners: M. Alekseev, A. Vasilyev, V. Vasilyev, F. Glazyrin, a, Dulov, M. Enikeev, V. Konovalova, N. Kochenov, . curly-tsev, G. Minkovsky, V. Pirozhkov, A. Ratinov, A. Stolyaren-ka, L. Filonov, A. Yakovlevat others.

In 1971, the First All-Union Conference on Forensic Psychology was held in Moscow, in which more than 300 scientists and practitioners took part; it became an important milestone and stimulus for the development of legal psychology. Specialists in the field of legal psychology took part in the next (NJI) congresses of psychologists of the USSR (1977, 1983, 1989), where the section "Legal Psychology" was presented.

In 1986, the II All-Union Conference on Legal Psychology took place in Tartu, where the name of the science, its direction, didactics and methods of psychological training of lawyers in higher educational institutions were determined. The problems of legal psychology were considered at special sections of the All-Union Conferences on the work of the psychological service in Moscow (1984), republican conferences on the problems of improving welfare (1987), the role of social and psychological sciences in improving the efficiency and culture of service (1988) in Tartu, with experimental psychology in Lvov (1988), at conferences and meetings held by the USSR Prosecutor's Office, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, etc.

The formation of Ukraine as an independent state prompted the further development of legal psychology. In accordance with the list of the Higher Attestation Commission of Ukraine, it entered the circle of psychological specialties (19.00.06), a specialized council for the defense of doctoral and master's theses was created at the National Academy of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. In 1996, the problems of legal psychology were considered at the section of the II All-Ukrainian Congress of Psychologists. Research specialists present have a fairly wide range. These are not only the problems of using forensic psychological expertise, the psychology of inquiry and investigation, the psychological problems of crime prevention, but also the psychology of the personality of the offender, the psychology of legal proceedings, lawful behavior, professiograms and psychograms of legal professions, and the like.

The horizon of psychological research and the areas of practical application of their results in practical jurisprudence are expanding. There is a tendency to use psychological knowledge to ensure the fulfillment of the tasks of civil justice, the prevention of administrative offenses, as well as their application in the legislative process. Positive changes are also observed in the organization of scientific research - in recent years, a desire has been determined for the coordination of scientific research, cooperation with scientific research in related fields - sociology, pedagogy, medicine. These processes indicate the exit of legal psychology in Ukraine to a new stage of development.

Legal psychology in Ukraine today is represented by the following main areas:

1) criminal psychology - psychological patterns of formation of an antisocial orientation of a person, motives for committing crimes, features of the emergence and dynamics of illegal attitudes of behavior; the psychology of the formation and development of criminal groups (crowds), etc.;

2) the psychology of procedural (investigative, judicial, lawyer, etc.) and non-procedural (operational-investigative, managerial, etc.) activities - the psychological foundations for the detection and investigation of crimes;

3) penitentiary psychology - psychological patterns of personality dynamics in the process of serving a sentence, including in places of deprivation of liberty, features of the formation and functioning of microgroups of convicts;

4) legal psychology - psychological aspects of law-making and the content of law, general and special prevention of the law, its influence on the formation of legal consciousness (public and individual) and subjects of legal relations;

5) psychology of legal work - psychological aspects of professional psychological selection, psychological support of operational and service activities, psychological training of specialists for the implementation of legal activities;

6) forensic psychological examination and other forms of using special psychological knowledge in the jurisdictional process (criminal, civil, administrative).

These areas of legal psychology are interconnected by the commonality of the psychological content of social and legal realities that make up an integrated scheme. Any other approach either conflicts with itself, attributing directions to legal psychology that are incompatible with law, or is characterized by an insufficient level of consideration of its legal aspects,

Legal psychology, like the legs of other branches of psychological science, has gone from purely speculative constructions to scientific and experimental research.

One of the first authors who considered a number of forensic psychological aspects in the context of the idea of ​​humanism was M. M. Shcherbatov (1733-11790). In his writings, he demanded that laws be developed taking into account the individual characteristics of a person's personality; he was one of the first to raise the issue of parole from punishment. He positively assessed the labor factor in the re-education of a criminal.

Of interest are the works of I. T. Pososhkov (1652-1726), in which psychological recommendations were given regarding the interrogation of the accused and witnesses, the classification of criminals, and other issues.

A significant number of works on legal psychology appeared in Russia in the third quarter of the 19th century. These are the works of I.S. Barshev "A look at the science of criminal law", K.Ya. Yanovich-Yanevsky "Thoughts about criminal justice from the point of view of psychology and physiology", A.U. Frese "Essay on Forensic Psychology", L.E. Vladimirov "Mental characteristics of criminals according to the latest research" and some others.

In these works, thoughts were expressed about the purely pragmatic use of psychological knowledge in the specific activities of judicial and investigative bodies.

The psychological issues of evaluating testimonies also occupied the outstanding French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace. In "Experiences in the Philosophy of the Theory of Probability", published in France in 1814, PS Laplace makes an attempt to give a materialistic interpretation of the question of the reliability of judicial decisions. He believed that this testimony is true, it adds up:

1. from the probabilities of the event itself, about which the witness narrates;

2. from the probability of four hypotheses regarding the interrogated person:

a) the witness does not make mistakes and does not lie;

b) the witness does not lie, but is mistaken;

c) the witness is not mistaken, but lies;

d) the witness both lies and makes mistakes.

Laplace's scheme is interesting as the first attempt to create a scientific method for evaluating evidence.

The study of the problems of forensic psychology for a long time did not go beyond these first attempts. In the second half of the 19th century not only the successful development of the natural sciences, but also the growth of crime in all the leading capitalist countries served as an impetus for the further expansion of forensic psychological research.



Late 19th and early 20th century associated with the intensive development of psychology, psychiatry and a number of legal disciplines (primarily criminal law). A number of scientists representing these sciences at that time occupied progressive positions (I.M. Sechenov, V.M. Bekhterev, S.S. Korsakov, A.F. Koni, etc.)

The development of psychology, psychiatry and law led to the need to formalize legal psychology as an independent scientific discipline. P.I. Kovalevsky in 1899 raised the question of the separation of psychopathology and legal psychology, as well as the introduction of these sciences into the course of legal education.

At the beginning of the 20th century experimental research methods are beginning to be used in legal psychology.

In the study of the psychology of crime investigation, a major step forward was the direct application of the experimental method of psychology. One of the creators of this method, the French psychologist Alfred Binet, was the first to experimentally study the question of the influence of suggestion on children's testimony. In 1900, he published a book entitled Suggestibility, in which a special chapter is devoted to the influence of suggestion on children's testimony.

Late 19th century - early 20th century characterized by the sociologization of criminological knowledge. The causes of crime as a social phenomenon began to be studied by sociologists J. Quetelet, E. Durkheim, M. Weber, and others, who, using the method of social statistics, overcame the anthropological approach in explaining the nature of criminal behavior, showing the dependence of deviant behavior on social conditions. For their time, these works were certainly a progressive phenomenon.

A distinctive feature of modern criminological knowledge is a systematic approach to the consideration and study of the causes and factors of deviant behavior, the development of the problem at the same time by representatives of various sciences: lawyers, sociologists, psychologists, physicians. This, in turn, makes it possible to approach the practice of crime prevention in a comprehensive manner.



Modern biological criminological theories explain the nature of criminal behavior, not as naively as before. They build their arguments on the achievements of modern sciences: genetics, psychology, psychoanalysis. For example, one of the sensations in 1970 was the discovery of the so-called Klinefelter's syndrome: chromosomal disorders of type 74XVV with a normal set of chromosomes in men among criminals are 36 times more common.

initial stage The emergence of legal psychology can be attributed to the XVIII century, the Enlightenment. It was then that such progressive thinkers and public figures as I. Kant, J.-J. Rousseau, F.-M.-A. Voltaire, D. Diderot, C. Montesquieu, the concept of a rule of law state was formed, and a new worldview developed in society, one of the progressive principles of which was the principle of guarantees for personal development and the private life of a citizen.

With the victory of the Great French Revolution (1789-1799), this principle could not but be reflected in the organization of power and the state of justice. It entailed the rejection of the theory of formal evidence, the separation of the judiciary from the legislative and executive, the subordination of the court only to the law. The “holy” Inquisition was overthrown, which claimed millions of human lives at the stake and in the dungeons. The recognition by the accused of their guilt in committing a crime ceased to be the “queen of evidence”, which made the use of torture and other cruelties senseless. The court became open and competitive, the presumption of innocence and the right to defense appeared. With the advent of the jury, the advocacy flourished. The verdict of acquittal became a legal means of protecting the rights of the defendant.

A few years later, outstanding French lawyers, with the support of Napoleon I, developed the Civil, Civil Procedure, Criminal, Criminal Procedure and Commercial Codes, which were destined to play a significant role in the entire history of European law. The criminal process became a guarantee of protection against unfounded accusations, and the truth in the evidence system was no longer spoken of as a material category, since truth was associated with the Inquisition. It was replaced by the truth judicial, or legal, - objective in content, but subjective in form.

In the XVIII-XIX centuries, on the basis of a new legal ideology, criminal behavior and the inner world of a criminal began to be studied. The work of the Italian educator and lawyer Cesare Beccaria "On Crimes and Punishments" (1764) received a wide public response at that time. The preface to the French edition of this treatise, which significantly influenced the minds of statesmen and scientists of that time, was written by Voltaire himself.

An attempt to take into account the temperament, nature and motives of human behavior in the investigation of crimes was made in the works of German scientists I. Gofbauzhr and I. Friedrich. Psychological issues of evaluating testimonies became the subject of research by the outstanding French scientist P.-S. Laplace. In the work "Experiences in the Philosophy of the Theory of Probability", published in France in 1814, he subjected the question of the reliability of judicial decisions to interpretation as a convinced materialist researcher.

During the middle and second half of the 19th century in connection with the anthropological approach in explaining the causes of crime, there is an increasing interest in criminal psychology and criminology. The founder of the anthropological school in criminology, which had a significant impact on the development of legal and psychological views of that time, was the Italian scientist, professor of forensic psychiatry Cesare Lombroso. He created the concept of a “congenital criminal”, which, due to its natural predisposition, cannot be corrected, just as it is impossible to tame and domesticate a predator. Lombroso did not reject the importance of psycho-physiological and moral factors in the formation of crime, but he attributed biological determinants to the leading ones. In the book "Criminal Man, Studied on the Basis of Anthropology, Forensic Medicine and Prison Science" (1876), he named the isolation of the possessor of criminal traits from society as a universal means of combating crime.

Attributing criminal behavior to pathology led to the fact that criminal psychology for decades to come was influenced by forensic psychiatry, becoming its second name.

The followers of Lombroso E. Ferri and R. Garofalo revised certain provisions of the theory of their forerunner, supplementing the list of biological factors of crime with social, economic and political ones, which did not prevent them from remaining supporters of the anthropological school. So, in the book "Criminal Sociology" (1883), E. Ferry, using the concept of "dangerous condition", put into it a purely Lombrosian idea of ​​a criminal personality's predisposition to crime from the moment of birth, calling it "criminal type".

In his work "Crime as a Social Phenomenon" (1924), E. Ferry reveals groups of factors that give rise to crime: individual, physical and social. He attributed the parameters of the organic and mental structure (mental, psychic, sensory anomalies), socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, education, upbringing, civil status, occupation, place of residence) to the group of individual factors.

The Italian lawyer and criminologist R. Garofalo, developing the concept of his teacher C. Lombroso, in the book "Criminology" (1885) considered the crime as "an insult to the fundamental altruistic feelings - mercy and justice" - the invariable conditions of human social adaptation. Unlike Ferry, who called criminals sick and demanded compulsory treatment for them, Garofalo tried to define crime as a social phenomenon, distinguishing between natural and artificial crimes. He considered natural crimes that cause suffering to other people and infringe on the right to property. Following Lombroso, characterizing the criminal, he endowed him with the features of a savage and mental underdevelopment.

Essential the activation of legal and psychological research began at the end of the 19th century. together and on the basis of the emerging experimental psychology (W. Wundt, G. Ebbinghaus, T. Ribot, A. Wiene). On this wave, forensic psychology appeared, a huge role in the creation of which was played by the work of the founder of forensic science, Hans Gross "Criminal Psychology" (1898).

Thanks to Gross, lawyers of that time got acquainted with modern achievements in the field of experimental psychophysiology: with the patterns of sensations, attention, memory, thinking, other cognitive processes, and the peculiarities of human psychomotor reactions.

In parallel with these achievements, the psychology of the formation and receipt of evidence developed (Marbe, Stern, Wertheimer). Theoretically, and then experimentally, Albert Helwig studied the psychology of the interrogator (policeman, judge, expert) and the interrogated (accused, victim, witness), developed a psychological interrogation technique.

Under the influence of the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, forensic psychologists began to make decisive attempts to penetrate into the subconscious sphere of criminals, to reveal their deep personal formations (F. Alexander, G. Staub, A. Adler, V. Bromberg and others). Convicts began to be examined with psychodiagnostic tests and other psychoanalytic methods. The conclusion reached by psychologists and criminologists confirmed the original hypothesis of 3. Freud that criminals do not have a higher mental sphere of personality, referred to as the super-ego (super-I). It followed from this that in this category of subjects the internal mechanism of social self-control is unbalanced, which manifests itself in the interaction of inhibitory and excitatory processes, and the criminal orientation is formed as a result of a breakdown in the stabilization of one's ego ("I") due to early mental trauma and the inability to realize oneself in a social environment. .

Psychologists and lawyers of the late 19th century began to apply the socio-psychological and criminological ideas of the French sociologists G. Tarde and E. Durkheim. Alfred Wiene (1857-1911) experimentally studied the influence of suggestion on the testimony of minors. In 1900, he published a work called "Suggestibility", which proved that, since the answers to questions always contain a certain percentage of distortion of the truth, in order to correctly evaluate the testimony in the protocols of the judicial investigation, both the questions and the answers to them should be detailed.

Under the influence of the views of C. Lombroso, E. Ferri, R. Garofalo, Z. Freud and other founders of biosocial theories, many foreign lawyers explained criminal behavior, solved the problems of optimizing law enforcement and professional selection. By this time, questions were formulated that needed to be resolved on the basis of a forensic psychological examination, and the need for a typology of crime and criminal behavior was recognized.

Since a significant range of forensic psychological problems emerged in psychology and began to be subjected to thorough scientific analysis, the Swiss psychologist Edouard Claparede introduced in 1906 the general term "legal psychology". By that time, three main areas of psychology clearly manifested themselves in it - criminal, judicial and penitentiary psychology. In the same year, Claparède introduced a course in legal psychology into the training program for lawyers at the University of Geneva.

Among the educational, methodological and scientific literature, it should be noted the work of M. Lippmann "Fundamentals of Psychology for Lawyers" (Leipzig, 1914), works on forensic psychology by other German authors: A. Kramer, V.F. Liszt, S. Yaffa. In England, by this time, the famous book by R. Harris, The School of Advocacy, was published, which, without exaggeration, can be called a textbook on lawyer psychology for all time.

Since at the beginning of the 20th century a sociological emphasis was identified in criminology in explaining the causes of crime, scientists such as J. Quetelet, E. Durkheim, P. Dupoty, M. Weber, L. Levy-Bruhl and others, using the method of social statistics, overcame the anthropological approach in explaining the nature of criminal behavior, showed the dependence of deviant behavior on various social factors.

A statistical analysis carried out by J. Quetelet and E. Durkheim of such anomalous phenomena as crime, prostitution, suicide over a certain historical period showed that the number of deviations in people's behavior inevitably increases during economic crises, social upheavals and wars. The results obtained questioned the theory of "innate criminal" Ch. Lombroso, influenced the psychological theories of crime of such American social psychologists as R. Merton, J. Starland, D. Myers, T. Sykes, E. Gluck and others. However, their views did not receive a methodological justification, they did not take into account the socio-economic determinism of crime and other negative phenomena of public life.

Due to the fact that legal psychology has always developed in close interaction with the theory of law, at the beginning of the 20th century. legal and psychological views became the basis for the emergence of a legal direction called the psychological school of law, and in the 1920s. - realistic school of law.

By this time, legal and psychological research is receiving a new impetus under the influence of behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, depth and cognitive psychology, parapsychology, and others. In the Austrian capital, Vienna, on the initiative of the police official U. Tartaruga, the Institute for Telepathic Research is being created. In the 30s. 20th century at the oldest educational institution- At the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), a department of parapsychology is being organized, the research of which is actively used in operational-search activities.

Foreign legal psychology owns initiative efforts in creating a system for training and advanced training of law enforcement officers. Among the most famous publications in this direction, the work of the Belgian criminologist and psychiatrist R. Louvage "Psychology and Crime" (Hamburg, 1956) and the American researcher G. Toch "Legal and Criminal Psychology" (New York, 1961) should be singled out. Within the framework of forensic psychology, other areas of it have also developed. However, unlike clinical medicine and its branch of psychiatry, which has played a leading role in legal proceedings for many decades, psychology achieved legal status only in 1962, after the decision of US Court of Appeals Judge Baizlon in the case of Jenkins v. United States (Jenkins v. .UnitedStates).

In the Jenkins criminal case, the judge of the jury was asked to ignore the testimony of a psychologist regarding a mental disorder. He did so because he was sincerely convinced that a psychologist was not qualified to issue a medical opinion. However, the US Court of Appeals ruled that the judge had erred and determined that some psychologists are entitled to testify as an expert in mental disorders. Further, the court proposed criteria to qualify a psychologist in this capacity.

Subsequently, other cases significantly expanded the scope of the problems covered by the psychological examination. Despite the existence of certain legal differences between states and between state and federal governments, psychologists have been regularly granted expert status in virtually every relevant area of ​​criminal, administrative, civil, and family law.

Having received a wide public outcry, the story of the Jenkins v. United States case strengthened the position of an expert psychologist in the judicial system of the leading European countries as well.

Despite obvious achievements, legal psychology abroad by now as an independent branch of science has not yet developed due to the lack of a generalized theoretical and methodological justification. At the same time, there are separate areas that provide psychological support for various areas of law enforcement and law enforcement activities. For example, in Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, the psychological characteristics of a person is an important document in any forensic and investigative case. Expert psychologists in these countries study the individual characteristics of juvenile delinquents without fail in order to determine their ability to bear criminal responsibility for their actions. A prerequisite for such an ability is the achievement by a 14-year-old adolescent of a level of mental development that allows him to consciously correlate his behavior with the rules of the hostel, the norms and requirements of the law. The subject of forensic psychological examination is increasingly becoming the causes and conditions that contributed to the commission of offenses by adolescents, recommendations of a psychological, pedagogical and preventive nature. In these and other European countries, the individual and personal characteristics of witnesses, the conditions under which they perceived certain circumstances, the truthfulness of testimony and other factual data are subject to study by an expert psychologist.

In their study “The Application of Psychology in Criminal Work” (1971), Hungarian scientists L. Dverd and F. Derek considered the issues of optimizing the psychological contact of criminal police officers with their agents. In the book "Psychology of Crime" (1983), W. Fülgrabe (Germany) traced the development of criminal behavior as a psychological phenomenon, and in the USA, through the efforts of a whole group of scientists, the role of a forensic psychologist in all stages of legal proceedings was studied (E.-A. Megerdzhi, 1976; D Cook, 1986; I. Velimesis, 1986; J.-K. Grossman, 1986; D.-L. Beck, 1987; M. Grinberg, 1987). At the same time, we note that a feature of foreign forensic psychologists is a penchant for various scientific movements and schools, mainly Freudianism, behaviorism, and their offshoots with the prefix "neo".

This trend can be traced in the activities of professional organizations, among which the most famous are the American Association of Correctional Psychology and the American Psychology-Law Society. In 1980, the Division of Psychology and Law (Division 41) was created by members of the American Psychological Association (APA for short). Following this, the APA also founded the Commission on Legal Issues (COLI). In 1978, the American Board of Forensic Psychology was created in order to certify qualified specialists and develop forensic psychology as an independent discipline.

The increased attention of forensic psychologists abroad is currently drawn to such problems as:

  • 1) examination of witnesses (expert witnesses) with mental disorders, the degree of usefulness of their testimony for a court verdict (decision);
  • 2) predicting the recurrence of criminal behavior (prediction of dangerousness), since the psychologist's position on this issue influences the court's decision to release the prisoner on parole;
  • 3) post-mortem examination (equivocaldeathanalysis) in the case of a suspicious death, which consists in collecting information about the habits, inclinations, lifestyle of the deceased, recreating his psychological portrait and explaining the causes of death;
  • 4) the study of the composition of the jury (jury research), since the racial, age, educational dissimilarity of its members may adversely affect their verdicts;
  • 5) drawing up a psychological portrait of an unknown person, usually a serial killer (profiling);
  • 6) establishing the degree of legal capacity of the subjects of legal relations (competencyandresponsibility), since the laws of some US states and Canadian provinces provide for several types of legal capacity. At the same time, the ability to answer before the law for one's actions (competency to standtrial) is the most important type of legal capacity;
  • 7) the ability of the mentally ill (mentalillness) and prisoners to adequately understand the conditions and content of the treatment (treatment) offered to them, to participate in scientific research.

However, since these directions in the USA and Europe are developed mainly by doctors by education (psychiatrists), in them the psychological approach and methods are often replaced by psychiatric ones. All this leads to the fact that forensic psychological studies, for all their pragmatism and concreteness, often become unconvincing, but they claim originality and exclusivity.

We also note that at present the term "legal psychology" is practically not used in foreign works, however, the psychological ideas and approaches contained in them make it possible to extend this term to their content. In line with legal and psychological knowledge, such scientific and applied sections as legal, preventive, criminal, operational-search, judicial, penitentiary psychology are successfully developing. The development of psychological problems related to the study of the personality of a witness, a victim of a crime, a hostage, the use of non-traditional methods of obtaining information in the process of solving crimes, and others is relevant.

In the book “Psychological Approaches to Crime and Punishment. Theory, research, practice ”(USA, 1984) by the famous British psychologist G.Yu. Eisenck (1916-1997) considered the psychological aspects of the motivation of crimes. In the collective work “Psychological approach to crime and its correction. Theory, research, practice” (USA, 1984) analyzes various forms of medical and psychological correction of criminal behavior. Practitioners, as well as scientists developing topical issues of legal psychology, are still interested in certain chapters of the book by D. Myers "Social Psychology" (USA, 1997). They are devoted to the socio-psychological issues of legal proceedings, in particular, the activities of the jury (the specifics of its perception of legal information, the adoption of a group decision, etc.).

At the end of the last century, the collections “Fundamentals of Police Psychology” (1996), “Introduction to Police Psychology” (1998) were published in Slovakia, in which the psychological issues of preventing, suppressing, detecting, solving crimes in activities public services and public order authorities were given close attention. Following this, on the basis of the international scientific-practical conference of police officers in Ljubljana (Slovenia), a two-volume publication “Police Activities in Central and Eastern Europe” (1998) is published, where the chapter “Organizational Psychology and Police Activities” discusses issues of preventive, operational-search and investigative psychology.

According to the analytical review produced by the Institute. M. Planck (Germany) in May 2009, more than 3.5 thousand practical psychologists work in the law enforcement agencies of Western European countries. Despite the fact that by now there are a significant number of scientific centers and academic institutions where research is being conducted on the problems of legal psychology, there is a tendency to reduce contacts and ties between psychologists in the Russian Federation and foreign countries. Although science is known to be cosmopolitan by definition, there has been a decrease in the number of collaborative cross-cultural studies, international symposiums, round tables, seminars, and the like. in the second decade of the 21st century.

An organizational form of strengthening the Russian-foreign partnership in the field of legal psychology, which is currently hindered by certain political differences, can be joint publications in scientific journals. Along with the main journals, Law and Human Behavior (“Law and Human Behavior”) and Criminal Justice and Behavior (“Criminal Proceedings and Behavior”), there are many others where it is possible to publish articles on topical issues of psychology and law: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (“Journal of Personality and Social Psychology”), The British Journal of Social Psychology (“British Journal of Social Psychology”), Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior (“Journal on the Theory of Social Behavior”), etc.

  • Encyclopedia of Legal Psychology / ed. ed. prof. A.M. Stolyarenko. M., 2003. pp. 490-494.
  • Criminology: a textbook for bachelors / otv. ed. V.E. Eminov. M.: Prospekt, 2015.S. 22-24.
  • There. S. 492.
  • Concise encyclopedia of psychology. second edition. Edited by Raymond J. Corsini, Alan J. Auerbach. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.
  • Aminov I.I. Legal psychology: textbook, allowance. M., 2007. S. 17-19.
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